Do Not Interpretations Belong to God Genesis 40

Eureka Baptist Church

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There are many amazing realities about the world and the universe.

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We live on a planet where there are places in the ocean that are over 30 ,000 feet deep.

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We have mountains that are over 30 ,000 feet high. We have diverse land animals, birds, and sea life.

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The human race is even more extraordinary than these. Humans are able to do remarkable feats.

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When you drive into a city, I always love doing this, you see the skyscrapers with their architecture.

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It's amazing to think that mankind created that. The universe we live in also leaves us speechless.

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When the sun goes down and the sky goes dark, we can see the stars and the planets.

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And what modern science has discovered is that the universe is very, very, very big.

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Some estimate that there are several hundred trillion galaxies and we live in one.

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If that doesn't humble us, I don't know what will. These are all amazing realities about the world and the universe, but all these pale in comparison to the greatest reality of all.

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The greatest reality is that a being exists that never had a beginning. This being created all the wonders that I just mentioned.

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He created all things. He is existence and not dependent on anyone else for his existence.

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And everything that exists would cease to exist if he was gone, which of course that can't happen.

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He is the sustaining power. So the greatest reality there is, is

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God. You wouldn't know this in the world we live in. The world that we live in is very man -centered.

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But what the Bible teaches us is this one God is three Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

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Before there was a creation, the triune God loved one another with a love so deep that our minds will never be able to grasp it.

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This God created our incredible world and breathtaking universe not because He was lonely, but because He desired to display

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His greatness. In eternity past, the Father, Son, and Spirit enjoyed each other's glory.

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When God created us, He created us to join this fellowship so that we too would enjoy the uncreated one.

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The great God, who without Him, there would be nothing. And when

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God brings you into a relationship with Jesus Christ, His aim is for you to glorify

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Him. To show the world how magnificent He is. This morning, as we continue our sermon series through Genesis, we are going to see

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Joseph show two Egyptians how great God is.

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And this will not only happen in our narrative today, but it will happen in future narratives as we look at the life of Joseph.

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So I encourage you to turn with me to Genesis 40. If you're using a red Bible in the pews, it's on pages 39 and 40.

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The sermon is titled, Do Not Interpretations Belong to God.

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Do not interpretations belong to God. And our big idea, our proposition, is

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God is glorified through His faithful servants. So very simple. God is glorified through His faithful servants.

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And we have one point. This is becoming a pattern here. Most of my sermons are three points, but this is one point.

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God is glorified through His faithful servants and this is how the Lord shows His infinite character through their lives.

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And we'll see this in the 23 verses. And when I say infinite, that might be a word you're not too familiar with. Don't think

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Buzz Lightyear. Okay, to infinity and beyond. Don't think that. When we say infinite, what

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I mean is God has no limits. That's a simple definition. He has no limitations to His being.

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The only limitation He has is that He can't sin. He can't do anything evil that would contradict

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His character. But before we jump into our text, let me give a little recap of last week's sermon.

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We looked at the story of Joseph and Potiphar's wife in Genesis 39. We saw that the

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Lord's consistent blessing was over Joseph through the smooth times of life and the times of adversity.

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At the beginning of the chapter, we saw the Lord bless Joseph's work as he did honest, hard work for Potiphar, who was the captain of the guard for Pharaoh.

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His labor was so exceptional that Potiphar promoted him in charge of his entire house.

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The text noted the Lord was with Joseph during this success when he had no adversity.

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But as we saw, adversity came for Joseph again. Potiphar's wife pursued

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Joseph, trying to lure him into lying with him. Joseph refused as she pursued him over and over again.

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It got to the point where Potiphar's wife came on to him physically and Joseph fled.

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Joseph did precisely what he was supposed to do. But Potiphar's wife grabbed

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Joseph's garment as he resisted her. And her anger at Joseph, refusing her advances, led her to desire to get back at him.

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Revenge. She called all the men of the house and Potiphar and told them the false claim that Joseph came on to her.

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And sadly, they believed her word. Joseph did nothing but faithful work as he served in Potiphar's house all that time.

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Yet this false accusation momentarily damaged his reputation. So Potiphar believed his wife and sent

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Joseph to prison. And we noted God's providence in this.

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He wasn't just sent to any prison. He was sent to the Pharaoh's prison.

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We've seen throughout Genesis that nothing happens by accident. And surely this is the case in Joseph's life as well.

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The last truth that we saw in the sermon last week is the Lord does not let his children hang out to dry.

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When his people face adversity, he stands with them and carries them through it. In fact, he accomplishes his great purposes in a person's life through the adversity.

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And he would do this with Joseph. As I mentioned, there are biographies written about couch potatoes, right?

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It's through people who face adversity, where God's writing the story of the person's life.

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And the God who is with Joseph through the smooth path and through the difficult path is the same one who goes through it with us as we face adversity in the life of faith, the ups and downs of our journey.

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Now this leads us to our narrative today where Joseph finds himself in Pharaoh's prison.

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In chapter 39, verse 20, we read that Potiphar sent him there. And now we ask the question, what becomes of his life?

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But as we saw, the Lord's not hanging him out to dry, but he's just getting started with this man.

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Joseph is going to be a mighty weapon for God's glory in Egypt. As we have seen

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God weave the details of Joseph's life, the note in 39 .20 that Joseph was placed in Pharaoh's prison is so important.

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As I just mentioned, right? It wasn't some random prison, it was the right prison. It was the prison where God wanted him to go.

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And so we can see where this is going. And we'll see where this leads us today.

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So let's begin by reading verses one through four, Genesis 40.

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So please look at the text with me. Sometime after this, the cupbearer of the king of Egypt and his baker committed an offense against their

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Lord, the king of Egypt. And Pharaoh was angry with his two officers, the chief cupbearer and the chief baker.

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And he put them in custody in the house of the captain of the guard in the prison where Joseph was confined.

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The captain of the guard appointed Joseph to be with them and he attended them. They continued for some time in custody.

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So while Joseph was in prison, two of Pharaoh's officers committed an offense against him.

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These two officers were the cupbearer and the baker. These two men were responsible for providing food and drink for this leader of their nation.

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The cupbearer provided the drink, he would provide wine and other drinks to him and the baker would provide the food.

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And you can see why this would have been an important position. In ancient times, leaders of nations would have been poisoned a lot.

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So you really had to trust your cupbearer and your baker. So something happened where the trust was breached and they're thrown into prison.

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Now what's interesting is that in verse one, the translation literally says these two officers sinned against Pharaoh.

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In the previous chapter in 39 verse nine, the same Hebrew verb is used when

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Joseph said that he did not want to sin against God. So we ask the question here, how do you sin against a human?

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Well, the answer is in Egypt, the Pharaoh was given divine status.

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If you did something that offended him, this meant that you sinned against him and it could be a capital crime.

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This offense that they committed against Pharaoh led him to send them to prison. And as we just read, they were not sent to some random prison, but they were sent to the right prison,

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Joseph's prison. So we see God's weaving hand here again.

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What verse four tells us is the captain of the guard, not Potiphar, but it's a different captain of the guard, he placed

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Joseph in a position to look after the cupbearer and the baker. Once again, we see God weaving this together again.

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So not only are they put in Joseph's prison, but they're also put in direct contact with Joseph.

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The end of verse four tells us that some time passed, but as we are about to read, something strange and unique was about to happen.

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So let's look at verses five through eight. And one night they both dreamed, the cupbearer and the baker of the king of Egypt who were confined in the prison, each his own dream and each dream with its own interpretation.

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When Joseph came to them in the morning, he saw that they were troubled. So he asked Pharaoh's officers who were with him in custody in his master's house, why are your faces downcast today?

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They said to him, we've had dreams and there is no one to interpret them.

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And Joseph said to them, do not interpretations belong to God?

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Please tell them to me. Okay, let's stop right there. So what was strange and unique for these two officers is they both had dreams that were not your ordinary dreams.

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These dreams stood out. Each of them after experiencing these dreams shared their dream with each other in the morning.

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We get this implication from what Joseph saw when he arrived, that he saw their faces downcast.

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And as he finds them both troubled, he asked them in verse seven, why are your faces downcast today?

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Joseph would have known these men after being in the prison with them. And so something stood out to him this day from the other days.

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Then in verse eight, they tell Joseph they've had these strange dreams, but don't know their meaning.

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There has to be a meaning to these dreams, doesn't there? What's interesting is that when we have dreams, they seem very random, don't they?

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You ever have a dream and you tell your spouse or someone else, I had a weird dream last night. What dreams show us is that the brain is still very active when we're sleeping.

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Most, if not all of our dreams, we have, I'm gonna say do not have any meaning.

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Your brain is just collecting recent thoughts and making a story out of those thoughts. It's really interesting.

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However, we know from scripture that on rare occasions, God uses dreams in order to communicate something to his people, or to communicate something to those who aren't his people, as in this case.

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And let me take a minute or two to say something about dreams, because you may wonder how does

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God use dreams in the Bible? Does this still apply to us today? Now in my own personal life,

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I think I've maybe had one instance where I felt the Lord maybe was communicating something to me through a dream.

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And I want to be clear, this wasn't prophecy. This wasn't any revelation. The canon's closed.

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The 66 books of the Bible, we have all we need for the life of faith. However, I do think that God can providentially use dreams in our life.

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And the dream I had was I was, I dreamed that the Lord was returning. And where I live on Lake Minnetonka, where I used to live, the lake is facing the west.

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And it's always such a beautiful sunset. And I always imagined as a child that when the

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Lord returned, he was gonna come out of the west over the lake. And so when

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I dreamed, that's what I dreamed. And I woke up frightened, because I was not following the

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Lord very closely at that time in my life. And so I thought, okay, well,

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I need to start following him more closely because I'm not ready for him to return. And I feel like that was what he was trying to communicate to me through that.

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And you may wonder, you hear stories too about places in the world. And we have

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Tony and Ida here today. There's stories about people who say they're having visions and dreams about Jesus Christ.

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Places where there isn't a clear gospel communication where they don't have Bibles, they don't have churches.

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And there's thousands and thousands of people in these countries that are saying they're dreaming that Jesus is communicating the gospel to them.

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And I don't doubt that. These people are coming to know the Lord, but we do need to be careful, right? It's different than what we see here because this is revelation.

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But the Lord can use our dreams. I would say on very, very rare occasions.

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You might go your whole life with ever having that experience, but it can happen.

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And what's interesting is that Joel 2 .28 says that a time is coming right before the return of Christ where there's gonna be lots of dreams happening in God's people.

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So you can look at that prophecy on your own time. But anyway, so back to our text here after that little talk about dreams.

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So these officers are depressed because these memorable and profound dreams are unable to be interpreted.

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But the Lord has placed his man Joseph in the right place at the right time. Verse eight is the key verse to this whole chapter.

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And if you have your Bible with you, I would say underline verse eight because this is the key of unlocking the meaning of this text of what the author wants us to see.

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If you're using a red Bible, we would ask that you would not underline it. But if it's your own Bible, you can do that.

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So verse eight, Joseph says, do not interpretations belong to God.

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Then he confidently says, please tell them to me. Joseph knows that God's hand is on his life.

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He also has past experience with dreams. In chapter 37, Joseph dreamed that he would reign over his brothers in the future.

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In that chapter, Joseph not only dreamed the dream, but he also knew its interpretation. In this case, these two officers of Pharaoh dream the dream, but Joseph knows the interpretation.

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And the only reason he will be able to interpret these dreams is because God is with him.

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And he knows that. Do not interpretations belong to God.

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God is going to be glorified through his faithful servants. So this is the focus of the sermon today.

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So let's see this in verses eight through 13, verses nine through 13, as the interpretation happens.

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So the chief cupbearer told his dream to Joseph and said to him, in my dream, there was a vine before me.

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And on the vine, there were three branches. As soon as it budded, its blossoms shot forth and the clusters ripened into grapes.

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Pharaoh's cup was in my hand. And I took the grapes and pressed them into Pharaoh's cup and placed the cup in Pharaoh's hand.

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Then Joseph said to him, this is its interpretation. The three branches are three days.

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In three days, Pharaoh will lift up your head and restore you to your office.

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And you shall place Pharaoh's cup in his hand as formerly when you were his cupbearer.

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Okay, let's stop right there. So Joseph gives the chief cupbearer a favorable interpretation.

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So what he says is the dream means in three days, the Pharaoh will restore him to his office and he will place the cup in Pharaoh's hand as he did before.

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So he's thinking, good, that's a good interpretation. I'm gonna get back to where I was.

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Now Joseph sees this as an opportunity to get out of prison. He knows that he was unjustly accused by Potiphar's wife.

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And now he sees this as an opportunity to be a free man again. So he makes this request in verses 14 through 15.

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Let's read this together. Joseph says, only remember me when it is well with you.

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And please do me the kindness to mention me to Pharaoh. And so get me out of this house.

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For I was indeed stolen out of the land of the Hebrews. And here also,

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I have done nothing that they should put me into the pit.

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So Joseph tells him, remember me when you leave. He tells the cupbearer,

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I was stolen out of my homeland. We saw that several weeks back. The traitors are passing by.

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His brothers sell them to him. They take him down to Egypt. He says, I was stolen out of my homeland.

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And now I've been put here unjustly from a false accusation. And here

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I am. Would you please help me? So keep that in your mind. We'll see something at the very end of our passage today.

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But we're gonna put that on hold for now. Now that Joseph is done interpreting the cupbearer's dream through God's enabling power, he now turns to the chief baker.

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And the chief baker anticipates good fortune for himself. But he's about to face a very dark reality.

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So you can imagine he's probably excited as he's about to ask him this. When the chief baker saw that the interpretation was favorable, he said to Joseph, I also had a dream.

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There were three baskets on my head. And in the uppermost basket, there were all sorts of baked food for Pharaoh.

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But the birds were eating out of the basket on my head. And Joseph answered and said, this is its interpretation.

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The three baskets are three days. In three days, Pharaoh will lift up your head from you and hang you on a tree.

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And the birds will eat the flesh from you. I guess we could say that there's a little bit of opposite interpretation there between the two.

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One could not be better, one could not be worse. So Joseph interprets the chief baker's dream to say in three days,

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Pharaoh's gonna lift up your head. And you'll notice there's a hyphen in the text. There's a pause because remember he said to the chief cupbearer that he was gonna lift up his head.

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And what that meant was he was gonna be restored to his office. This has a different meaning. After the pause, he says he will lift up your head from you.

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Talking about his execution, that he is going to be hanged. As you might imagine, once the chief baker heard this, he would have been terrified.

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Now we don't know why one had a favorable interpretation and the other had a horrible one. But that's not the main point.

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The main point is what we are going to see in verses 20 through 22.

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And that is Joseph got the interpretation of these dreams right.

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And he didn't do it on his own ability. He did it with God's help. So let's look at verses 20 through 22 here to see this come to pass.

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On the third day, which was Pharaoh's birthday, he made a feast for all his servants and lifted up the head of the chief cupbearer and the head of the chief baker among his servants.

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He restored the chief cupbearer to his position and he placed the cup in Pharaoh's hand.

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But he hanged the chief baker as Joseph had interpreted to them. So let's stop right there.

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So as the third day comes along, the chief cupbearer and the chief baker, could you imagine?

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Let's put ourselves in their shoes. They're wondering, is this guy just blowing smoke or is this really going to happen?

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They would have been nervous. One of them would have been nervous for, am I going to get out of prison? One of them would have been nervous, am

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I going to be alive in three days? So they're waiting for three days to pass to see if this man is truly from God.

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Is he authentic or is he a phony? And if Joseph is right, then things will come to pass precisely as he said.

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And that's what's so fascinating about scripture is that when we see prophecies fulfilled, they're fulfilled exactly the way that they're said.

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And we see that in the New Testament with these Old Testament prophecies. When Jesus came, right? It says he was going to ride in on a donkey through Jerusalem.

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Guess what? He rode in on a donkey. The crucifixion is described in vivid detail in Isaiah 53.

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That was written before the crucifixion was even invented. And yet it happens in vivid detail.

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God does this. And we've seen this before in Genesis. One of the ways God proves himself to be

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God is if things come to pass the way he said. Not vaguely, but precisely.

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We talked about Nostradamus. Maybe you've heard about him in popular culture.

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He was a 17th century mathematician or 16th or 17th century. I can't remember which one. But he would make these prophecies.

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But his prophecies were always vague. Like you could fit an elephant inside of it. I mean, they were so wide.

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God's prophecies aren't that way. They're very tight, very precise. Where when people see it, they say, wow, that is right on the money.

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We've already seen this in Genesis. One example would be in Genesis 17, 21. The Lord told Abraham that Sarah would have a son this time next year.

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In Genesis 21, one, this came to pass. As it is written, the Lord visited Sarah as he had said, and the

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Lord did to Sarah as he had promised. Now in this case, what Joseph spoke from the

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Lord, of course, came to pass. The chief cupbearer is restored to his position on the third day.

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Not the second day, not the fourth day, but the third day. And the chief baker is put to death on the third day.

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The way in which he died was also predicted exactly. The chief baker would not have lived to tell of the glory of God performed through Joseph, but the chief cupbearer would.

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In fact, he will tell Pharaoh of Joseph next week, as we'll see in chapter 41.

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And the Lord did this, the same reason he did everything, to display his glory, not only to Joseph, but to the

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Egyptians. They would know his greatness, whether they worshiped him or not. Remember in Exodus when, or I shouldn't say

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Exodus, in Joshua, when the spies visited Rahab. Remember what

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Rahab said? She was describing the reputation of the Lord. Like the people in the area knew about this

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God. And even though most, if not all the people there didn't worship him, they still knew about his greatness.

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And that's the case with the Egyptians as well. And what we see in this text and all throughout the

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Bible is the Lord is infinite in knowledge, right? He has no limits with his knowledge.

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And he's infinite in power as he does as he pleases. The Lord plans, wills, and knows the future exhaustively.

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In Isaiah 46, nine through 11, the Lord says this concerning himself. He says,

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I am God and there is no other. I am God and there is none like me. Declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done.

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Saying, my counsel shall stand and I will accomplish all my purpose. Calling a bird of prey from the east, the man of my counsel from a far country.

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By the way, in context, this is talking about the prophecy of Cyrus, King Cyrus. He says, I have spoken and I will bring it to pass.

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I have purposed and I will do it. And the point that he's saying, I say these things long ago and then

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I am the one who brings them to pass precisely. Whatever the

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Lord says happens and he proves himself to be God. These two

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Egyptians would have been amazed at Joseph. One in delight and one in dread.

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And they would have wondered about the God behind him. And the author Moses wants us to see

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God's glory through Joseph in this. And when we talk about the glory of God, sometimes that's a word, we just kind of throw it around.

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What does this mean? When we talk about the glory of God, what I mean by this, and I think what the

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Bible means by it, is the praise of God's attributes. We praise

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God for who he is. So in this sermon today, we are praising him not only for who he is, but for his works as well.

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We praise him for his greatness in revealing the future to Joseph through these dreams.

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And this is what worship is. Tony mentioned today, right? They're going to the mission field. They're going to Albania to their homeland and hopefully planting these churches, right?

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Because people aren't worshipping Jesus in those places. They're worshipping something else.

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They're worshipping a false God. They're worshipping themselves. They're worshipping something else. But we give praise and honor to God for who he is as his followers.

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And we give praise to him because he's worthy. And if we come away from this passage and see

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Joseph as the hero, Joseph as the sole focus, we missed the point of this passage.

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We cannot see that. Verse eight, do not interpretations belong to God.

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Joseph's ability to interpret comes from the Lord alone. So we need to understand verse eight.

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Now in one sense, Joseph does deserve praise for his faithfulness. But the praise for Joseph is for being a faithful worker.

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But the difference is God deserves the highest praise. And this highest praise leads to worship.

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Only God is praised in this way because only God is worshipped. Now there are passages in Scripture that say that we, as his faithful servants,

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Lord willing, will receive glory and honor for our faithfulness. Romans 2 .6

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is one of those verses. But not the same way God receives glory and honor. Only he is worshipped.

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Now as we think about the glory of God and the life of his servants, let's look at how this relates to our lives.

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As we look at this, we may be thinking, I've never done anything like this. How is God glorified through my life?

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What we must understand is that every person is ordinary. The Lord created Adam from the dust of the ground.

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We are dust. That should humble us. But the Lord loves to do extraordinary things through dust, through his people.

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And when we see someone do great things, the Lord is the one who enables someone to do those things. And what's fascinating about it, if you look at church history, there have been some people who have done some extraordinary things for God.

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Last Sunday, I went to New Life Church in Dresser. You guys know where Dresser is just south of here.

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And you guys know New Life as well. And they just started a thing where they're going to have a focus on one person from church history every month.

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And all these men are gathering to learn about this man from history. And the one we looked at was

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George Whitefield. He was an 18th century evangelist. He was from London, England.

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And he was known as someone who preached the gospel unlike probably anybody in history.

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He not only preached the gospel in England, but he also came to America and was one of the chief leaders of the

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Great Awakening where people were coming to faith in Christ in masses. And what this man did, it almost seems impossible.

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Historians have said that he preached 30 sermons a week. They said that he preached more than he slept.

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And even on the day he died, he preached. And the story goes that he preached his final sermon.

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He knew his health was failing. He knew he probably didn't have much time. He's probably in his mid 50s, but his health was failing.

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And he went home and people wanted to hear him preach again. And so they actually went into his house and he preached as he was dying.

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You know, people usually say people, at least he was doing the thing he loved when he died. Well, that could be said of George Whitefield.

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He was preaching as he died. And this is a man who preached to thousands and thousands and thousands of people.

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And he was probably the most famous person. He was arguably one of the most famous people in the world at that time.

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And the reason you maybe haven't heard of him is because secular historians kind of grab onto the people that they, you know, he was more famous than Benjamin Franklin, who he was friends with.

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But the secular historians kind of grab onto the person that they love. And the Christians have grabbed onto Whitefield to tell his story.

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But anyway, he did extraordinary things and God was glorified through his faithfulness.

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This man was great. But if we see that he was great and stop there, right? We missed the point. His ability came from the

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Lord's power in his life. And you may think, well,

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I can't do what George Whitefield did. Well, you can't. I can't do what Joseph did.

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You can't. But you can glorify

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God with your life. And you do it not through the extraordinary things, but oftentimes through the small things.

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One of my pastor friends said that the Christian life, it's more like making a bed than building a house, right?

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Because usually it's the small things of life where the faithfulness is. He does it through you doing your part in a ministry team here at Eureka.

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Teaching children's church, helping with VBS, the way you raise your family in godliness, kindness to your neighbor, through your consistent work ethic where people can admire your honest, hard work.

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Through sharing the gospel with an unbeliever. And in general, through your whole life of loving the

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Lord. People notice. Tony shared today, right? These people at this church that he went to in Tirana, Albania, these people stood out.

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And he wanted what they had. And praise God that he got Christ through their witness.

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The Lord cares very much about your faithfulness and the small things of life. Jesus said in Luke 16 .10, One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much.

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This is the most of life. And when you add it all up, it adds up to the extraordinary. When one reflects on your life.

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When it is over. Sometimes we talk a lot about the extraordinary as Christians, right? Like interpreting dreams like Joseph and being like George Whitefield and conquering the world for Christ's sake.

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But I heard one author say, he says you want to conquer the world, but you don't want to wash dishes.

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It's comical to say that, but if you're faithful in the little things, you'll be faithful in the big things.

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And I've talked about my grandfather many times to you before. And I have a picture of him on my desk, in my office, just to remind me of his faithfulness.

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He is one of the best examples that I can think of of one who was faithful in the little. He served the

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Lord as an accountant at Cargill. In his local church, he was the church treasurer. He took care of his wife, my grandmother, who had many, many physical problems.

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And like I said, wasn't the beautiful radiant woman that he married when he was younger, she went downhill fast soon after their marriage.

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And he never complained about it as he stood by her and took care of her faithfully all those years.

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And he raised my mom and her brother as well. And when people looked at his life, they would have said, he just lived an ordinary life.

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But as I look at his life, I say, wow, what a life lived for the

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Lord. What an extraordinary man who served a great God. And God was glorified through his life.

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And as the Egyptians saw Joseph interpret these dreams as we saw today, and we'll see more next week, they would have thought, who is this

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God who Joseph serves? Our gods can't do this.

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And we're gonna see that next week. None of their gods have this ability to interpret dreams or to know the future.

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Who is this God who tells these events even before they happen? Joseph was faithful and we recognize that.

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After all, the Lord does reward his servants, but the Lord deserves the highest praise for the great works he did in his life.

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And the same goes for our life. Anything that we do that counts in this world for his sake, he gets the glory.

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And we should make it our aim to live each day for him, that he would be displayed through us.

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And we saw this on full display in our text this morning. And remember, as you go through the life of faith, the

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Lord calls you to faithfulness. And as you faithfully live for him, people will be able to look at your life, believers and unbelievers, as his works are performed through you.

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And believers will praise God for his glory displayed in your life.

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And unbelievers won't be able to deny it, as we see here today.

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And some of them may come to faith in Christ. That's one of the most powerful ways to do evangelism is just be like Christ where you go.

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And people will notice that. And in our community, I tell you what, people at KJ's Bar, you stand out to those people.

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And we need to pray for those people that they would come to know Christ. They're our neighbors, right? We need to pray that these people would come to know

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Christ and people in our community who don't know him. And as I close out this sermon here,

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I'm gonna summarize what I said. God is glorified through the faithfulness of his servants.

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And we saw how this is. His infinite character is shown as we live for him.

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And we can say like Joseph, do not these works come from God, right?

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What do you have that you did not receive? 1 Corinthians 4, 7. So as I close,

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I'm going to read the final verse. I'm gonna read this at the end because it leads us into next

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Sunday where Joseph will interpret another dream. So let's look as we close here at verse 23.

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Remember earlier when Joseph said, get me out of prison. Now we're gonna see what happened.

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Yet the chief cupbearer did not remember Joseph, but forgot him.

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Can you, do you realize how demoralizing this would have been for Joseph? He said, get me out of here.

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His time wasn't yet to get out of there because the Lord had a plan for him to stay there.

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And that's what we're gonna see next week. The chief cupbearer is gonna remember Joseph and what he did.

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And the Lord is going to do something with Joseph and the Pharaoh.

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So we see the pieces being put together here. We saw how he was led to Egypt. He's led to the right place,

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Potiphar, to the prison. And now he's going to meet Pharaoh. I look forward to looking at that with you next week.

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Let's pray. Father in heaven, I thank you for your word.

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I thank you for the fact that it is supernatural. The Holy Spirit inspired everything in it.

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And you want us to see what is here. You want us to live out what is here.

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You want us to praise you for what is here. And so may we do that, Lord. What an awesome

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God you are, that you can interpret a dream, that you know it and you predict it and it comes to pass exactly as you said it would.

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And you use your faithful servant to do it. We praise you, Lord, for your greatness.

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And Lord, as we go with our lives, as we leave here, may we be faithful in what you've called us to do, to be faithful in the little things and not just the extraordinary, but the little things.

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And so that people would see you in our lives and that you would be glorified,

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Lord, and that we would be full of joy as a result of seeing you get the praise that you are due.